Counter-Terrorism, ISIS, Paris, Etc.

I am ashamed and horrified at the news these days.  It seems to me that it is the easiest thing in the world to capitalize on fear, to give in to the pressures of the day.  Like all these governors claiming they will reject Syrian refugees.  Like the facebook posts arguing we should close our hearts and homes, give in to the fear that they're all somehow terrorists.

This bothers me, for two reasons.  First - because I know Muslims are a group like any other.  That is, I (as a rather lapsed Catholic) am very different from a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, even though we all might nominally be called Christian. So even though there are some jihadists mixed in with the community, I know that the vast majority are people just like you and me.  People who want to live in peace, and security.  People who are refugees because they are NOT terrorists.

Second.  Well, the second reason gets more at the mystery at the heart of human nature.  It's easier to explain with a story:

A facility had tools go missing, so the manager decided to put all the tools in a room with a chain and a padlock, so only he or his designated people could get to the tools.  His CEO came to visit and heard about this.  The next day, he dropped the chain and the padlock (which had been cut through with bolt cutters) on the manager's desk. 

I think the appeal here is immediately obvious.  There might have been one person in the entire plant stealing tools, but locking them up made it seem like everyone was untrustworthy.  Who wouldn't want to work for a CEO who made it clear he trusted his people, even at the risk of losing some tools? 

At the same time, if you were the manager whose tools were missing, what would you do?  Or rather - what would you have done differently?  (This rings especially true for me, because we recently bought a cage to store some of the equipment at work.  Not saying they were stolen, precisely.  Its more like people on a shift who knew they had a 'good' one might happen to leave it in their locker or put it somewhere hard to find so that they could easily use the same one the next day.  I personally would have preferred to spend the money to buy everyone their own, and have them sign for it and be accountable for it...but I digress.)

The point here is that sometimes we make choices that sound good at the time.  That are clearly a reaction to a specific situation, and seem like the best/easiest response to that situation.  But in the long run?  You've got employees who know they aren't trusted.  That fuzzy thing called morale drops.  The more you try to control, the more resentful people get, the more morale drops...the less people want to work there. 

So some terrorists, who happen to be Muslim, are committing  horrific attacks.  Part of the strategy of terrorism is to do that...to provoke an overreaction, one that feeds dissent and fuels your side.  (Algeria, for example, where the French rounded up the innocent as well as the guilty, thereby pushing the innocent into the arms of the insurgents/terrorists.)

And here we've got people immediately saying "Let's stop letting refugees in".

It's understandable.  And it's a short-sighted reaction entirely based on fear. 

"Fear is the mind-killer."

So let's try to think about this without fear, without that little voice saying 'if we accept these refugees we'll open ourselves up to attack'.  After all, who is more likely to become a terrorist - someone who found welcome and safety in European lands?  Or someone who has been shuffled off, rejected, abandoned, and left with nowhere to go?

That little voice, btw, is the voice I feel the New Testament repeatedly says is wrong.  Where is the notion of the Good Samaritan?  Of the person who would give the shirt of their back?  Or is charity only for people 'like us'?

Hell.  I have a house, and a spare room.  Sort of.  I'd have to move some things out, and it'd be kind of cramped.  But if there's any organization out there looking for a temporary home for a refugee family in the States I'm willing to take them in.

It's the right thing to do.

Update - Frustration

I feel like I left things hanging a bit.  I had a theme I was posting on, and then stopped.

Reasons?  It's complicated.  Some if it is that I have a full time job (on vacation right now) and I don't always want to devote my leisure to writing here...

But the bulk of it is because some days it doesn't seem to matter what I write, or think, or say. I am not one of our big decision makers.  I am not wealthy, or powerful. Who is going to care if I never complete that series?  And what sort of results would writing it have, anyway?  Someone might read it, if they weren't bored within a couple of sentences, and think about it for a minute or two.  But it probably wouldn't drive any particular changes in behavior.

Some days I go online and all I see are articles saying that this is what you need to do - Wear this. No, you have to wear that.  Do this.  No, do that.  Say things this way.  No, don't do that.

I think 'sure, I can do this.  I just need to X, or Y'.  But the advice can be contradictory, and I don't think these advisors know any better than you do.  Success depends too much on who you're working with and what they're looking for.  Plus I notice that there's still so many good, smart people who still struggle to make it.  A friend of mine did a great post on tumblr the other day.  It's long, but good and captures so much of what I'm wondering/ struggling with. 

I don't want to believe that this is the way it is.  That so much of life, so many people, will struggle and get nowhere.  Especially when you see the people who are succeeding, and realize that many of them haven't actually worked harder than the people you know.  Nor, necessarily, are they smarter.

I like to think I'm a realist. I never expected our system to be perfect.  I thought, however, that we had rules in place that gave us the ability to change our system for the better.  Voting for candidates.  Voting for specific propositions.  Feedback mechanisms to help keep us from going too far astray.

I also thought...well, that the system values dissent.  You need people to go against the grain, because that's what breaks up groupthink and makes sure you're really analyzing a situation.  Yet I've come to feel that I may, perhaps, on occasion, be penalized for being too outspoken.  For not playing along.  (I think I'm ultimately helping the organization.  And I would hope that any boss/supervisor/manager I worked for would appreciate and value that.) Funny, our mythology of success always makes it sound like this is rewarded.  The innovator who stands out from the crowd and succeeds beyond their wildest dreams.  The person who speaks truth to power, and becomes a trusted advisor. 

In reality, I'm beginning to think it's more likely you'll get marginalized just like the engineer who warned of the Challenger disaster.  (What I find even more disturbing is how much business books etc claim they want and need this...and then create systems that seem to penalize the ones that actually provide it.  You see the same sort of dilemma with work - everyone knows you get burnt out and perform less productively if you work too much, but people still feel pressured to work more and compete for least amount of sleep/most hours worked.  Feel that the boss is looking for those peopel who give it their all.  You can't have the former if you create a system rewarding people for the latter.)

 

Pay It Forward, Legislation, Updates, etc.

A couple of different strands of thought going on.

First - do you ever look at the warning labels on product and think "I guess someone must have tried doing that"?  Like "Do not eat toner" on a toner ink cartridge. 

I feel that way about laws, as well.  When people say 'there oughta be a law', it's because something went wrong...and legally there was nothing you could say or do about it.  Is making something a law necessarily the best way of handling the problem?  Maybe not.  Yet I don't think we should repeal a law unless we're willing to address the underlying concern behind it.  (i.e. environmental protections were created because people would carelessly release toxic chemicals in places - like drinking water - that were harmful to others.  If you want to eliminate the EPA, show me how you are going to address problems like that without them.) 

I am not a fan of people who obey the letter of the law while trying to maneuver around the spirit of it.  That applies to any number of things, though more recently I would say it applies to Hillary (and any other politician) who tries to conduct public business through their own private e-mails.   Why?  Because most of us have work e-mail and personal e-mail, and the only reason I can think of for conducting work via personal e-mail is if you're trying to avoid leaving a record.

In other news - I read and liked this article, though I'm skeptical of whether it will lead to real results.  It reminds me of the problem with 'pay it forward' logic.  That is - on the face of it, it makes perfect sense that if we all did something nice to others and paid it forward when someone else is nice to us than we could live in an amazingly wonderful world.  Yet even though various people have 'paid it forward', they never seem to result in this sort of transformation.  I think there are a couple of primary reasons for this.

First - it's easy to 'pay it forward' with something cheap, something that doesn't really require a lot of effort on our part.  Just to show how easy it was, I decided to pay for an extra mocha when I was at a coffee shop.  It was really kind of fun - a lady came in after I'd ordered, and I got to hear the cashier explain that her drink was paid for...see how surprised and happy it made her.  And see her decide to carry it on by paying for the next one.  And then a man came in to get his coffee, and went through the whole process again...buying a drink for the next person.  (I haven't had a chance to follow up with the barista.  He's the owner/manager of that store and I think he's on vacation?  I wanted to know how long it lasted.)  Btw, I didn't expect it to last forever.  While I knew that most recipients would choose to pay for the next person, eventually you'd run into someone who wouldn't.  And that's fine...the point is not to put an obligation on them to keep paying.

Anyways.  Pay it forward works for something simple and easy, like coffee.  It's less likely to happen when it entails a real hardship.  Like paying for someone's college.  Or house.  Or car.

The second thing is that most people are waiting for someone else to start the chain.  If they benefit, they are more than happy to pass it along...but they're waiting for someone else to benefit them first.  (If you want to feel like you really made a difference, try starting one of these yourself.  Imagine all the smiles and happy faces you make in a day, the little jolt out of the ordinary that you give them.  Think of what ripples that can have...that little bit of happiness leading to a slightly happier entrance to work, a cheerful conversation with a co-worker, etc.)

So to bring this back to the article above - I think government involvement is the sign of failure in the system.  I think inequality is a huge problem, one of the biggest threats to the American way of life today, and I would absolutely love to see it addressed the way the author suggests.  Yet I'm skeptical that the business leaders he is addressing are willing to take the steps he is calling for.

And finally - I've decided to re-read Robert Alter's pretty awesome translation of the first five books of the bible.  I think he does a pretty amazing job of explaining the context (lost in translation from Hebrew to English) and capturing what little we know about the cultures of those times.  I'm also going to look for some of his other works. 

No Words (Okay, really a lot of words)

I had more to discuss about economics and domestic politics, but I came across an article that has me thinking in a rather different direction.


Understand, please.  I have a healthy skepticism towards anyone who claims that God is on their side.  It seems to me that the people who are most certain that they know what God wants, are generally the ones who have the least understanding.  They're more likely to be hearing what they want to hear and claiming it's God's voice.  And when that happens, there's a very real danger.  I remember reading about a historical battle during the Crusades.  The Knights Templar were certain God was on their side, and then went and did some really stupid things.  Like attempting to cross a desert without enough water, while engaged with Saladin no less.  If history has proven anything, it's that God (if you believe there is one) favors people who use the brains He gave them. 


I don't claim I know what God wants, it'd be kind of silly to do so when I just said I'm skeptical of those who do.  Some days I'm not even sure He exists.  Yet I think you can kind of tell what's more or less likely to be inspired by that sense of other, versus self-serving beliefs that allow us to justify what we want. 


I think that God would direct us towards being more compassionate, more open.  Less judgmental.  Less self-centered.  That we should think more of others, see them as individuals worthy of our respect. 


And that claims which support our self interests (i.e. encourage us to be more judgmental, more superior than others, or that justify being selfish and self-centered) are probably just us justifying the views we want to hear and claiming it has God's approval.


Which is why, uncomfortable as I am with using harsh and judgmental religious language, the only words I have for ISIS here is "Blasphemous" and "Evil".


To claim that God wants you to do this!?!  No.  Hell no.  This is so far from God that I have no words.


Honestly, it makes me want to join up and fight against ISIS right here and now.  Except...


Well, that's an entirely different topic. 


Suffice to say that I'm suddenly reminded that there are some very, very bad things out there in the world.  To be honest, it's not just ISIS.  There's conflict and violence all over the world, some of it just as ugly.  Human trafficking, child soldiers, and more.


I don't feel comfortable shrugging and pretending there's nothing going on, or that we're unable to do anything about it.  Don't want to just link to an article like that and say 'how horrible', so all my friends on Facebook can chime in and agree.


But what?

So What Can We Do?

A post or two ago, I was discussing the tragedy of poverty.  You could probably add 'and inequality' to that, too.  But I didn't go so far as to suggest a solution, in part because a segment of our society immediately thinks 'wealth distribution!!!' and is already prepared to reject anything you propose.

Which is why I'm not yet going to propose anything here.  I just wanted to throw out a few more ideas for consideration.

I recently read a book about the oil industry, and I want to explore the concept of 'rents' a little more.  In this case, the rents aren't what you are paying to stay in your home.  It has to do with the difference between the basic costs of producing a product, and the profit you make when you sell that product on the market. 

With oil, the rents can be pretty high...once you've found oil and paid for the basic infrastructure the basic costs for producing a particular gallon of oil aren't that high.  (The costs are tied in with upgrading/improving infrastructure and paying to explore for more oil-producing locations.  That exploration can be pretty expensive, too.)

Demand, on the other hand, IS high.  High enough that the price per a gallon of oil is significantly higher than the production cost.  So someone (or rather someones) can make a pretty good profit off of it.

So where does that profit go? 

When oil first started to become big, a lot of it went to the businesses that found the oil in the first place.  The ones that spent money drilling holes, built up the infrastructure, etc.

But nationalism and anti-colonialism became a big deal shortly after oil became so important.  And a lot of countries felt like the foreign oil companies were taking away their resources and making a profit off of it.  One that came at their expense, and left them poor.  (I have to wonder if the story would have been different if the oil companies had been local...if the profit had stayed within the country, albeit in private hands, would there have been such outrage?) 

Anyways...that led to a push by the oil producing countries to gain a portion of the rents.  Now, most conservative capitalists grew upset by this, because those nations did it by nationalizing company oil resources.  They will point out that most state run oil companies stopped producing as much revenue...they let the infrastructure wear out, didn't invest in upgrades, etc.  But the heart of the issue wasn't capitalist/socialist...it was about colonialism.  Foreign companies coming into a country, making sweetheart deals at the host nations expense, and making a lot of money off of it.  (I am oversimplifying this, but I want to highlight why an oil producing nation would feel they have a claim on part of those profits.  There have been consequences to this, but I'll go into that elsewhere.)

There are two other major interests in these rents.  First - consumers.  We are all, to one extent or another, consumers of oil.  Driving to work, using goods that were driven to us, buying product shipped overseas...we all consume oil.  And the cheaper it is, the easier it is on us.  Goods don't cost as much to ship, we don't have to budget as much of our income to gas, etc.

The final one, and the one you could argue has the least rights to these 'rents', are oil consuming nations.  They can raise tariffs and taxes on oil and gain some portion of those rents.  Of course, although they may not be entitled to the 'rent'...they may have a right to use tariffs and taxes to influence consumer incentives.  That is, making gas artificially more expensive can also encourage less usage...and can make alternative energy sources more competitive.

I just listed four different groups who want a portion of the rents.  So who deserves it, and how much of it should they get?

This is one area where self-interest often determines the answer.  Self-interest and politics, of course.  I will say, however, that all groups can cause problems if they don't feel they are given a fair share here.

As most economists/capitalists would argue, companies won't fund the expensive oil exploration process if they weren't able to get a significant profit off of it.  Nor would they continue to upgrade or improve an oil producing plant.

Nations, as recent history shows, can capitalize on nationalist sentiment to take over.

Consumers...well, if you've heard the term 'oil choke price' it gives you a sense of what can go wrong when oil is too expensive.  Some of it is basic economics.  When gas costs too much, alternative fuels become more viable.  More efficient cars make more sense.  Biking to work makes more sense.  So if oil becomes too expensive it can lose most of it's customers.  But the 'oil choke collar' has other affects, because the more consumers have to spend on gas the less they have to spend elsewhere.  This includes more than just the cost of filling up your tank...it also includes the price increases for all products that are shipped via oil fueled transportation.  The price of food goes up, because it costs more to ship it to your local store.  The price of everything goes up, for the same reason.

And as for oil-consuming nations, in some ways purchasing oil evokes the same fears the oil-producing nations had when their industries were run by foreign companies.  Oil consuming nations are basically importing oil, and putting money in the pockets of other nations...whether their foreign businesses or the state-run governments themselves.  How much trouble an oil-consuming nation can cause probably has more to do with how interested they are in pushing for energy alternatives.

The dynamics between these different groups fall under one of my favorite topics - the social science theory behind social dilemmas. 

My Day Job

This week has been a little busy.  We had a Physical Inventory for my area...so I spent most of the week making sure we processed as much product out of inventory as possible, and tried my best to double check any questionable issues.

See, when you move inventory in a system (like SAP) sometimes the physical movement doesn't correspond to what we say we did in SAP.  That means that there's a risk that material will end up in the wrong location...either our system believes it is there when it isn't, or it is physically there even though our system didn't expect it.  So about once a year we have to check every single part in the building.  Well, every single part that is in our inventory - since we're a returns center, we have a stream of 'to be processed' material from our customers that is not yet in inventory.  We don't actually have to break down and process those for this annual check.

Again, since we're a returns center, we're not supposed to have a lot of inventory on hand.  Most of it is received in and processed out right away. 

Anyways, I've been a little busy this week.  It went fairly well, which was good.  My first time in charge for one of these, too.  (I've been with this company for a couple of years now, but for all the previous ones I was at our distribution center where inventory checks are significantly different.  Plus with three different shifts and multiple departments you can't really pin down discrepencies to any one supervisor.  You can figure out which associate miscounted, overpicked or underpicked or put material to the wrong location incorrectly, sure.  Supervisors can discuss ways of creating a better system.  Re-training if needed, deciding to use internal employees instead of hiring contract labor, things like that...but it's different when you're the only supervisor for a small single shift.)

Then yesterday I took my Little (from Big Brothers, Big Sisters) to Stitches.  A knitting/crocheting expo in Schaumberg.  She seemed to like it, and we made a day of it in the Chicago/Schaumberg area.  Visited the Shedd Aquarium, had pizza at a restaurant she likes, etc.  We checked out the new public bikes that you can borrow to ride around the museum area.  Those might be worth using if we make another day trip.

So what with one thing and another, I haven't had the time to follow up on my current topic thread.  I'll remedy that today, at least a little bit.  Probably not everything though.

I Am A Special Snowflake. :)

This article covers the issue I want to explore soon, but I have a couple of other topics I wanted to discuss first.

First is another bit of human nature.  I think most of us understand that if you have a million dollars and decide to give it to needy people, that you could give a million people $1 each and make absolutely no difference in their life.  For this topic, I realized that even though I'm mostly secular I will pretty much have todraw on the Catholic upbringing I grew up with.  We all know that Jesus told us to help our fellow person.  To give the shirt off our backs if need be.  That it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a came to get through a needle's eye. (And even if the 'needle's eye' refers to the entrance to a temple instead of an actual needle's eye, it's still a very challenging task.) 

Yet there's a part of all of us that realizes "if I truly gave up everything in order to help others, I would have nothing and there would still be too many people who also have nothing." 

I'm making the point because instead of thinking hard about how we can do both, I think most of us learn to harden our hearts and ignore the implicit challenge. We may give a tithe to our churches, donate to a charity, and do good works but most of the time it's only if we can afford it and not to the extent of giving the shirt off our backs. 

We give what we can tolerate, rather than give in this crazy manner as asked in the Bible.  And we absolve ourselves of any responsibility for our fellow human being.  Leave it up to the churches, or the state, or whoever it is that we're giving our money to.  That's why we gave them the money in the first place.

"The poor will always be with us" and "I am not my brother's keeper."

As a child, my school had little posters throughout the building.  A drawing of a young boy and underneath it said "I know I'm somebody because God don't make no junk."  This brings to mind a paradox, a way of looking at the world that I find dizzyingly incomprehensible.  If we all are something amazing, all children of God, how can we all be special at the same time?  If everyone is special...nobody is special.  Like the cynical saying "We are all special snowflakes." Each one may be uniquely amazing if you look at them individually (I have a book with amazing photographs of individual snowflakes) but when you put it together you just get - snow.

This is the part that boggles my mind, and I have to marvel at anyone with the understanding to really get it.  What if we said that without the cynicism?  What if we considered each and every one of us a special snowflake, worthy of being photographed and placed in a book like the one I just mentioned?  What if that was true of everybody. The person who is bagging your groceries.  The person sweeping the floor.  The waiter or waitress serving you dinner.  The stock broker. The politician. The lobbyist.  The CEO. The union worker.

The idiot. The genius. The jerk. The b****. The thug. The fat cat. The stud. The slut. The helpless. The clingy.  The needy. The rich. The poor.

Every dismissive thought, every time we simplify someone into a word, we are disrespecting the complex and wondrous artistry that makes every single one of us the unique person we are.

To bring this back to my starting point - every time someone is unable to develop to their full potential it is a tragedy.  Poverty is a tragedy. A loss.  We have no idea how many Einsteins, Rembrandts, Da Vincis, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Abraham Lincolns were out there yet unable to provide their unique contribution.

Changing that isn't easy, and isn't just a matter of redistributing wealth.  I think it's a worthy goal, though.